Alumni Spotlight

Holding High Expectations

博天堂官方受托人Shashwata Prateek Dutta BS 08， EdLD，相信教育的重要性 作为社会流动性的推动者——这是他在自己的旅程中经历过的 success. 

那是2008年，卡特里娜飓风（Hurricane Katrina）的洪水重塑了纽市（New city）的三年后 Orleans. Prateek Dutta had recently graduated from the University of Northern Colorado 拥有政治学学位的他加入了“为美国而教”，面对的是一间教室 of sixth graders. He had arrived in that classroom after his own journey through the education system with a sense of understanding and wanting to make a difference. 

“为美国而教”的重点是教育公平，有一批勇于承担责任的领导人 to teaching for two years.   

他和他的同事们努力向学生灌输大学的重要性 但我发现，虽然很多学生继续上学，但也有很多人没有，这很重要 he wanted to change.  

“我对大学充满热情，因为它是一种手段，可以帮助人们实现最终目标 making sure they have the tools to go up the economic ladder. I feel education is the best means to do that, or the fastest way to do that.” 

It’s a belief rooted in his life experiences.  

Dutta’s parents grew up in East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh. “At that time, the United Nations called it the poorest place in the world,” Dutta says. “My dad’s dream was to come to the United States to study, which is what happened. He got a student visa and went to school in Boston.”  

他的父亲把他的母亲带到波士顿，杜塔和他的妹妹出生在那里. 他的父亲获得了经济学博士学位，是一名教授，但不是语言教授 barriers became an obstacle to teaching. With no job, and unable to pay the bills, the family made the painful decision to leave the U.S. and move to Kolkata, India, where they remained until Dutta was about eight years old.  

“那时，我的父母决定再给美国梦一个机会 chance. So, they basically looked at a map of the United States and said, ‘Colorado looks like a place for a fresh start.’ They got two suitcases, changed their currency — the rupees changed to about $40 — and came to Denver,” Dutta says. 

因为他不会说英语，杜塔被安排在英语作为第二语言的学校 (ESL) classroom where most students spoke Spanish. “Teachers had a hard time interacting with me 
for a bulk of my elementary and middle school,” 
he remembers.  

Gaps in learning became chasms. By high school he was far behind academically, with grades that he knew would make entry into a four-year university impossible. He started applying to community colleges, but says UNC was his dream school.  

“我见过博天堂官方的博天堂官方主任，他告诉了我的成绩和考试成绩 didn’t cut it, but they’d see what they could do.”  

Dutta applied, and was accepted on the condition he take summer classes.  

“博天堂官方是唯一一所给了我机会的大学，所以我永远感激. 它改变了我的人生轨迹因为没有被博天堂官方录取，老实说 don’t know what I would’ve done,” he says. 

Getting to UNC was just part of the battle.  

“I was so far behind. Everything took so much longer for me. It’s not a sob story at all, just the reality. My favorite place in the entire campus was Michener Library. I loved it. I used to go to Starbucks, get a massive cup of coffee, and from 
7 p.m. to midnight, I would stay in that library and study every night.” 

杜塔说，博天堂官方的教职员和历史学教授
弗里茨·费舍尔帮助了他 succeed. 

“He was an incredible force for my life. He made teaching fun and engaging, and I think one of the reasons I applied to Teach for America was because of his class. 我上过他博天堂官方网站越南战争的课，我记得当时我在想‘他怎么能做出来 so complicated, so engaging?’”  

当时，杜塔并不确定自己想要什么样的职业生涯，但根据他的经验 在学校里，他知道他想帮助那些被忽视或被边缘化的学生.  

“我申请了‘为美国而教’，我被录取了，然后我被安排在新奥尔良. That’s how I got started teaching.” 

在新奥尔良，杜塔开始感到他的努力正在为短期带来改变 是学期，但不是长期的，尽管他很喜欢和学生们一起工作 there, he decided to take his own education a step further.  

“我意识到，无论我在课堂上做了多少功课，总有一些其他的事情 powerful societal forces that kept putting students in a different trajectory. I realized 我需要更多的技能，对政策和政治有更好的理解，才能真正做出决定 a difference. That’s why I went to grad school.” 

他被哈佛大学的教育学博士项目录取 leadership.  

“说实话，在我被哈佛大学录取之前的10年里，我一直在努力从高中毕业. And so obviously there’s a lot of feeling of, ‘do I belong?’ I did well there, but I didn’t like it as much as UNC. I never felt that sense of home that UNC brings. 我拿到了学位，我很高兴我拿到了，但是把它和我在博天堂官方的经历相比 just night and day,” Dutta says. “I will put our UNC professors and our students against Harvard students and faculty any day of the week. But without question, I had a better experience at UNC than I did at Harvard.” 

他完成了博士学位，并觉得与其在体制内工作，不如 could do more outside the system, advocating for change. He returned to Denver and became the Colorado policy director for Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). 

“教育改革民主党之所以成立，是因为民主党在历史上 我一直在推动一系列问题的公平，但在教育方面， sometimes the party has defended the status quo. Our organization works to move both 政治和政策向前推进，确保所有学生都能接受高质量的教育.”  

对杜塔来说，他作为学生、教师和倡导者的岁月已经向他证明了这一点的重要性 of having 
high expectations.  

“我知道老师和学校对某些人的期望很低是什么感觉 groups of students. When you hold students to high standards, they’ll always meet them.” 

Low expectations, he asserts, are a veiled form of racism. The positive impact of 对学生寄予厚望是他作为一名教师的亲身经历 在新奥尔良帮助低收入家庭的学生，帮助他们应对巨大的困难 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. When taught with high expectations, they succeeded.  
 直到成为一名学生，杜塔才有机会在学校取得成功 他带来了这些经验，加上教学、研究生工作和 his work for DFER — to a new role at UNC.  

2020年1月，科罗拉多州州长贾里德·波利斯任命杜塔任期三年 as a trustee at UNC. He is attuned to concerns about inequity in higher education in addition to his focus on K-12 education. 

“Higher education is not absolved from inequity. We’ve done a really good job of decreasing high school dropout rates across the country. But what we have not done is decrease college dropouts. The majority of low-income students that go into college, drop out; the majority of Black students and Latino students that go to college drop out. And they have nothing but debt after they’ve dropped out. It’s unacceptable. And we need to do something about that. All higher education institutions, including UNC,” Dutta says. 

作为一名受托人，他认为博天堂官方面临着多重挑战——包括留住学生 and graduation rates. And while he has high expectations for students, he also has high expectations for his alma mater and its ability to address those challenges. 

“我们必须提高入学率和保有率，同时缩小成绩差距 gap in graduation and retention. Our new strategic plan — Rowing, Not Drifting —  creates a roadmap on how to overcome these challenges and make UNC stronger. Most 重要的是，该战略计划确保我校更加以学生为中心 has a more coherent student support system,” he says. “I think we have a great opportunity 招收那些可能来自贫困家庭的学生，并真正推动他们 them into the middle and upper class. UNC’s mission, I would say, is to be an engine of equity. And to really be a driver of social mobility.”

–Debbie Pitner Moors